The settlement is built into what appears to be the remains of a small pre-War town, with the current inhabitants only using a small part of the buildings available. The town's only permanent merchant, Joe Porter, lives in an old Dot's Diner. Adjacent to this building is an old garage which is home to Dominic and Machete, and across the street is the old fire station, now Uncle Roe's house which Roe shares with his nephew Derek Pacion. Behind the old garage, a small brahmin stable can be found.

In front of the town to the west is a large circular cul-de-sac where caravan merchants appear regularly.

If the player character kills or disables (with the Robotics Expert perk) the Mechanist'srobots before they can leave for the robot repair center and disappear, they will respawn after 72 hours at the location of their corpse and remain there permanently. They will level with the player character, and will change into higher-leveled robots when the player character reaches the appropriate levels. For example, a robobrain and a Mister Gutsy will be replaced with sentry bots once the player character is at level 20 or above. The robots are friendly towards the player character and the town citizens, and will attack any random wasteland creatures that may approach the town.

Killing either the Mechanist and/or the AntAgonizer before they fight will cause Uncle Roe to give the player character 400 caps but will not allow them to start The Superhuman Gambit quest.

Uncle Roe's dialogue is dependent on how the Lone Wanderer handles the situation. If one is killed and the other is spared, he will remark in awe how the player character managed to scare one of them away. If both are killed, he will simply thank the player character and give the reward accordingly.

Upon intervening in the standoff, both the AntAgonizer and the Mechanist have an absurdly high amount of health.

The following is based on Fallout 3 cut content and has not been confirmed by canon sources.

Canterbury Commons was originally intended to have an open-air bazaar in the circular cul-de-sac, populated by various traders. Entries exist for two such NPCs, named "Caravan Trader" in the editor, but remain unused and without any vendor containers.